Federal immigration agents raided Howard Industries headquarters, seen here in the Ellisville Industrial Park in Laurel, Miss., as members of the Homeland Security ICE team investigate if the company was using undocumented workers Monday, Aug. 25, 2008. Howard Industries produces dozens of products, ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to the company's Web site. (AP Photo/George Clark)
(AP2008)

On the heels of pleading guilty to hiring undocumented workers, Howard Industries, a Mississippi company, is the target of a lawsuit that accuses it of denying jobs to non-immigrants.

A discrimination lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court on behalf of four black women claims the company gave preferential treatment to Latino applicants and workers, many of whom were illegal immigrants from Mexico. The lawsuit, which represents only one side of a legal argument, seeks class-action status.

Immigration agents detained nearly 600 illegal immigrants at Howard Industries' electrical transformer plant in Laurel in 2008. It was the largest such raid in U.S. history.

The company pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to violate immigration laws and was fined $2.5 million.

A woman who answered the phone Monday at Howard Industries declined to give her name and said the company had no comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that one of the plaintiffs, Charlyn Dozier, applied for a job with Howard Industries every three to six months beginning in 2002, but wasn't offered a position until after the 2008 raid.

The other plaintiffs make similar allegations. Their attorney, Lisa M. Ross, did not immediately respond to a message Monday.

The lawsuit claims Howard Industries not only knew it was hiring illegal immigrants, but instructed some on how to get false identities and concealed the fact that hundreds of employees were illegal immigrants.

In the days after the raid, hundreds of people lined up outside the plant to apply for jobs. Jobs at Howard Industries were among the most coveted in the area, which is in Mississippi's Pine Belt region and is home to a commercial timber industry and chicken processing plants.

Howard Industries makes dozens of products from electrical transformers to medical supplies. It had been considered one of Mississippi's most successful private companies.

Howard Industries has repeatedly denied knowing that illegal immigrants worked at the sprawling plant, and blamed the situation on its former personnel director, José Humberto González. González was the only company executive charged in the case and pleaded guilty in December 2009. His sentencing is scheduled for Thursday in federal court in Hattiesburg.

In a lengthy statement after pleading guilty last week, Howard Industries said the illegal immigrants used fake papers to circumvent numerous identification checks the company uses. But prosecutors said the company knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

Some of the workers were given jobs even after the Social Security Administration told the company that their Social Security numbers were not valid, prosecutors said. The same allegation is made in the civil lawsuit.